Challenging Torture (Scott Horton)

[kpete]

Challenging Torture
George Washington: "Death penalty might be a suitable punishment for a soldier who abuses a prisoner"
BY Scott Horton
PUBLISHED February 4, 2008

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In our nation, like in the Roman Empire at the time of Christ, a double standard has been erected. In theory, torture is available for use on the “enemy,” but not, in any event, on American citizens. But torture is by its nature both contagious and corrosive, and history knows of many efforts by states to contain it, but none of them have been effective. My friend Darius Rejali from Reed College has a new book out, published by Princeton University Press, called Torture and Democracy. It is a work of superior scholarship, meticulously chronicling the development of torture techniques from antiquity forward. That is the sort of work that a torture museum might present, of course. But Prof. Rejali continues to do something far more difficult. How does torture affect modern democratic societies that use it, he asks. And he starts by asking about their efforts to regulate and control torture.

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But Rejali tells us that the barriers and internal rules could not hold. Once torture emerged as a practice authorized by law in some circumstances it spread very quickly, and ultimately the prohibition against torturing citizens could not be sustained. Moreover, he catalogues the appearance of torture and efforts of states to control it over many centuries and in many societies, with impressive chapters on the French in the waning colonial era, the Nazis through World War II, the Soviets from the Bolshevik Revolution, the Communist Chinese, the Iranians from the time of the Shah and after his overthrow, and finally, and most surprisingly, the United States under George W. Bush. There are clear lessons to be drawn from these historical excursions, but the experience of the Romans—the most masterful state-builders of antiquity—really tells us all we need to know. Torture is a virus which cannot be effectively controlled. If permitted at all, it will undermine the integrity and worth of humanity in any society in which it is let loose. It is the ultimate social agent of corrosion.

Those in authority in this country set that agent of corrosion free and they did it secretly, covertly in the months after 9/11. What they did violated the nation’s laws and more importantly, perhaps, our national self-understanding. When their practices were revealed, they reacted by lying about what they did and then scapegoating a number of young soldiers who misbehaved under conditions in which those in authority encouraged them to misbehave. The authors of the torture policy have hidden in the shadows and have manipulated the levers of power to shield themselves from public scrutiny and from accountability in any form. And they have successfully evaded accountability to this day.

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America has had no lengthy historical debate over torture because the prohibition against torture was our birthright. It was anchored in the English law before our nation was even founded, but the Framers of our Republic used the prohibition of torture as an issue by which we defined ourselves. Torture was the tool of an autocratic or despotic state, they said, no democracy would allow it. George Washington was emphatic in prohibiting it, issuing standing orders for the punishment of any soldier who mistreated a prisoner. In fact, Washington said that the death penalty might be a suitable punishment for a soldier who abuses a prisoner, and he likewise prescribed harsh treatment for any soldier who mocked or denigrated the religious beliefs of a prisoner. The current George W. has entirely different ideas, of course.


more at:
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/02/hbc-90002305